


I need a witness to see the mess I've made

by eonism



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:23:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eonism/pseuds/eonism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after 6.17. Dean comes and Castiel goes, and they don’t talk about it. It’s just easier that way. Like the old days when the apocalypse was on the rails, and Castiel was still stumbling from grace, and Dean swore up and down that fumbling hook-ups in motel rooms didn’t count for much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I need a witness to see the mess I've made

It happens every few towns, every few mile markers between Minnesota and Illinois, following the criss-cross of county lines between South Dakota and Kansas. Dean comes back from the front desk with a second room key and says something about needing a night without Sam’s snoring or Sam’s neck-popping or Sam’s whatever. Sam just shrugs and says “Like you’re a joy to share a room with,” and goes down his itemized list of complaints about Dean’s dirty socks and Dean’s inability to do the laundry and Dean’s talking in his sleep.

Sometimes Dean sticks around to argue while they unpack the car, if he’s got a point to make. Most days it’s not worth chasing, but he always locks the room door behind him and closes the curtains. When it’s dark he opens the bottle of good bourbon he’s been carrying around in his duffel for the last four jobs, sits on the foot of the rented bed, closes his eyes and prays. That’s the part Sam doesn’t need to know about.

And now I lay me down to sleep, praying that Castiel can fuck off to Earth for ten minutes. In the name of the father, and the son, and some other guy, forever and ever, amen. It’s not a real prayer. He makes sure to remind himself of that, as ham-fisted as it is, as obnoxious as it must be to hear. It’s more like leaving a message, or opening a door. Sometimes Castiel walks through it, looking wind-swept and on-edge, and sometimes he doesn’t. Dean doesn’t get to be disappointed when he doesn’t. That’s part of the deal. 

Dean comes and Castiel goes, and they don’t talk about it. It’s just easier that way. Like the old days when the apocalypse was on the rails, and Castiel was still stumbling from grace, and Dean swore up and down that fumbling hook-ups in motel rooms didn’t count for much. It was the end of the world and it was what it was. No questions, no talking the next morning, nobody gets hurt. Before Sam locked himself in the cage and before Lisa and Ben, and Sam came back and everything got complicated again. Before the war in Heaven and Balthazar started traipsing around at Castiel’s side like a blast from the past, or a bad boyfriend, or a hundred other things that run through Dean’s head but never quite make it to his mouth.

But they agreed not to talk about things, and who was Dean to mess that up now?

Tonight it’s a Tuesday in a cornflower blue room on a particularly lonesome stretch of Iowan back-road. Dean prays and receives no answer. He reminds himself about the disappointment thing, and after ten minutes of twiddling his thumbs, sighs. Shoves his room key into his pocket, slips on his jacket, and leaves for the bar down the road that they’d passed on the way in. The bar is dirty and loud for a weeknight. It’s a good distraction, with cheap beer on tap and pretty waitresses. Some older, some younger, all working a flirty walk from table to table to get better tips out of the rough-looking guys crowded around the bar. It’s familiar and safe, and there’s a shortage of that going around these days.

Dean orders a beer from a redhead in a pink top. He winks. She smiles. It’s easy to do, and she might give him her number if he plays his cards right. Four jobs ago he might have tried for it, but tonight he keeps his eyes (and hands) to himself and drinks his beer, then another, and another. Maybe going through all this was dumb, he thinks. Maybe it’s too much to ask in the face of things, for a night in a motel room on a dusty back-road when Heaven above him is on fire from war and Hell below is in shambles, and Purgatory is hissing in the treads of monsters singing Eve’s name. Maybe he’s asking too much, and after three beers doesn’t feel like thinking anymore. Just feels tired, and what the hell kind of Tuesday is it when he’s tired after just three beers? 

Dean squares his tab with the redhead and leaves a decent tip, and doesn’t bother to check the ticket for her number. Name written in big swirls, the I’s dotted with little circles, the digits underscored by three little X’s and O’s. Four jobs ago he might have, even if the thought of Lisa made him crumple it up and throw it away. Tonight he’s not going to entertain the notion, and he slides off his bar stool, across the bar and into the dingy little men’s room. At the sink he washes the greasy film from the bar-top off his hands and sighs, but it isn’t the gently flicker of the overhead bulb that gets his attention. It’s the beat of wings that tells Dean he’s no longer alone, the rush of air that rattles the tiles, makes the stall walls wobble in their hinges.

“Well, it’s about time,” he says to the reflection that joins his in the mirror. 

Over his shoulder Castiel’s face is sketched out of shadow, dark under the eyes and the hollows of his face like he hasn’t been sleeping. Dean knows angels don’t sleep, but there are a lot of things he doesn’t know about the angel these days. It puts a weird little pit in his stomach, but he doesn’t say anything about that. This, too, is part of the deal.

“Dean,” Cas says simply. Everything about Cas is tense, pulled tight, ready to snap under the weight of his shoulders. Dean doesn’t say anything about that, either.

“Took you long enough,” he says instead, and as Dean turns Cas is in his space. “I thought you stood me up for a minute there.”

“I had other obligations.” Cas pins Dean in against the sink. Behind them the door locks in the slide of the bolt. “I got here as soon as I could spare the time.”

Dean wants to ask about Raphael, Balthazar and the war. Instead he grabs Cas by the lapels of his coat and drags him in for a full and thorough kiss. All tongue and teeth, spit and fire.

“You need to work on the pillow-talk, Cas,” he says, just to fill the air between them. It’s not like he was heart-broken or anything. So he just smiles and nips at Cas’s bottom lip, “Good thing I’m easy, then.”

“I can’t stay long,” Cas breathes out and sounds sorry, crowding Dean in at the sink, pushing him into the mirror. “There’s another battle. My lieutenants are closing in on a group of Raphael’s soldiers, but I don’t have much time.”

Dean doesn’t want to hear anything about sorry and tugs at Cas’s tie. The kissing is all hunger and want, hands fumbling under jackets and inside shirts, fingers raking through hair and leaving marks on exposed skin. Cas gets Dean’s belt and fly open so fast that Dean can’t help but laugh, “Whoa, whoa, Sport. It’s not a race.” But Cas doesn’t seem to hear that and Dean doesn’t care, because he’s gotten Cas out of the coat and jacket, tossed over the side of the nearest stall. Cas’s collar undone, shirt opening in a V over his flat chest, Dean’s teeth making bruises in the angel’s skin. 

He forgets how hard he’s gotten until he opens Cas’s trousers to get a hand around his dick, tugging at the root. Shameless, feeling it harden and lengthen in his palm until Cas is making obscene noises into his mouth. It sends a shock through his system, from his gut to the tip of his dick in an electric current. Dean forgets about the motel room just a minute down the road, too, because Cas has him pinned at the hips and is digging into his groin and something like static is making the air pop, the light bulb overhead sizzling in and out of life. 

Dean licks his palm when he can get his mouth back, with Cas sucking at the skin at his shoulder and rocking against him, greedy for the contact. Gets it wet enough to cuff around the both of them, trying to get a hold of the rhythm built up between them, and yeah, so it’s been a while. Not since a job in Oklahoma with some skinwalkers roaming around a small town like a bunch of Near Dark rejects, without the Bill Paxton and the cheap special effects. It was more blood and guts and obnoxious monsters, and when Dean had gotten a minute to himself he got a hold of Cas to fuck him senseless across cheap motel sheets. They didn’t talk about much then, either. Cas just seemed happy for the distraction, and Dean was happy to oblige. 

That’s another one of those things Sam doesn’t need to know about. They’re all written down in the private history Dean’s been rekindling with the angel for the last few months. Nights in motel rooms, coming and going through open doors, not talking about those little things that Cas won’t mention, even when he’s looking haunted and lost. Dean knows that look, knows it like the back of his hand and the bottoms of empty bourbon bottles. So they do this, and they don’t mention it in the morning, because Cas needs it and he likes it and whether or not he’ll say it in public, Dean likes to be the one to give it to him.

Sam, most definitely, doesn’t need to know about that last part.

Spit-slick and jack rabbit-fast, Dean works his hand up and down the both of them, pressed against the mirror, half-folded into the sink. They’re a mess like this, clothes tugged halfway off, rutting on each other, and Dean can’t help the laugh that escapes him. He can either laugh or try to slow this down, but Cas is too keyed up, panting, frantic, hot. Twitchy like a startled horse and on a trajectory that only ends in the crescent-moon bruises Dean will find in the shower tomorrow. It’s easy to forgot how strong Cas is, slight as he is in Jimmy Novak’s unassuming body. Gripping Dean’s hips and arching up into his hand, the sink under Dean’s weight moans in distress, the mirror cracking at the force, ready to give. It keeps this grounded, their feet to the floor. It keeps this real, like the bruises are real in the morning, even when the rest of the evidence is washed away.

The whole room might crumble beneath them, Dean thinks, and the mirror might shatter and the bulb might burst. Biting Cas’s mouth and swallowing every strained, foreign sound that he makes, Dean lets himself ride through the fire of orgasm and decides, Bring it on. Burn it all down. The bar and the motel and this little nothing stretch of Iowan back-road, whatever stands between this moment and the next job. Let God sort out the details and bury the dead. They each come, eyes closed, mouths open. Cas first, then Dean in three quick jerks, and ruining the fronts of their shirts in the process. 

Then Cas opens his eyes, wet and black in this light, and he’s a wreck of bruised lips and red cheeks. It never fails to bring Dean short when Cas gets like this, so far from sure and on the edge of blasphemy, dazed, debauched, hungry. Then Cas kisses Dean again, all lips and soft tongue and hands cupping his face the way one would when holding something fragile, and Dean doesn’t want to think about anything else.

“I missed you,” Cas breathes out. 

Dean breathes it in, nods, and swipes his tongue across his bottom lip. “Yeah,” he says, even though he means something else. 

He doesn’t say it and Cas nods and pulls away. Maybe looks a little hurt, but doesn’t say anything about it. The realization quickly dawns on Dean that they’ve just had sex in a men’s room, so he shakes off the fog of orgasm (and how quickly Cas seems to recover always pisses him off, but whatever). They move to pull themselves back together, clean up the messes made of one another, jackets found, zipped up and shrugged over the evidence. Cas doesn’t say anything when he unlocks the door and waits patiently for Dean, who feels a little embarrassed at the situation at hand. Small town, two men walk out of a bathroom together looking like sex, like a real live Brokeback Mountain joke, but he walks through the door anyway. Through the bar and he keeps his head down but Cas doesn’t care. He’s all tension and strength again, a double-dog-dare from laying waste to the room if anybody says a word, so nobody does.

A hand at Cas’s elbow guides them out to the Impala and up the road and then to Dean’s room. Behind the locked door the jackets come off again, folded over and laid down neatly on the corner armchair by Cas while Dean changes out of his ruined shirt. Dean sits down on the bed, and without asking or being asked, Cas pours each of them a drink from the bottle on the dresser. He hands one to Dean and sits down beside him to drink in silence. 

It should be so easy. To just sit and drink, and not think, not talk. It’s anything but, and it’s kind of pissing Dean off.

“Well, you’ve been quiet,” Dean eventually says into his glass, by way of making conversation. 

Cas, who looks tired, wrung-out like ten miles of chewed pavement, doesn’t bother looking up. “I have to go soon.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Dean. I would rather be here. I just.” The words trail off on a shrug and Cas takes another drink. “I wish things could be different. I just don’t see how that’s possible. Not anymore.”

Dean wants to ask about the war, Raphael, Balthazar, all of it. Instead he shakes his head. “So what exactly is going on here?”

Cas looks at the bottom of his glass like he’s looking for an answer, and comes up short. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, what are you getting out of all this? Is this just some angelic booty-call to you or what?”

“Is that what you want to hear, Dean?” Cas looks accusing but not entirely jaded, just resigned. “That is what you wanted, isn’t it? Something easy?”

“Don’t start with that shit. I’m serious, Cas. If you’re just coasting, fine, whatever. But if you’re throwing me a bone here, you can keep it.” Dean doesn’t mean to sound angry, because he isn’t, not really. He’s just tired of this tight feeling in his chest, waiting for the next five-alarm fire to put out, the next house of cards to collapse on their heads. “For Christ’s sake, this is baseline.”

“Do I enjoy this? Yes. It isn’t ideal, but.” Cas stops, catches himself, straightens up. “I’ve learned to take what I can from this, whatever it is. I can’t expect you to offer anything more than that.”

That brings Dean up short, hard like a slap. 

“Cas.” He licks his lips, can’t believe he’s even saying this. “Look, a while back, Balthazar said—”

“Balthazar lies,” Cas cuts him off sharply, finishes his bourbon in a long swallow. He stands to pour himself another. “We both know he can be – erratic, at times.”

Dean watches Cas pour another drink and swallow the whole thing like water. Not so long ago the idea of Cas with a drink or a pill bottle in hand made him a little queasy, thinking of the Cas in that clunky old pick-up truck with his skittish little laugh. Even this Cas is different from the angel that burst into that barn three years ago, all fire and will, determination sighing under every word, punctuating every step. This Cas is older, softer around the edges from wear and tear. He gets most of the jokes Dean tells, and likes bourbon better than tequila, and he pours drinks for Dean and wears his clothes like a person would. Smoothes out the creases and adjusts his collar the way Dean taught him to, and how Dean imagines Jimmy Novak must have a lifetime ago, before all of this shit started.

So Cas pours another drink and Dean watches and sighs. The urge to fight drains out of him, whiskey-warm and informed by the guarded way Cas stands at the dresser, squared off and ready to take flight. Dean puts the glass down on the nightstand and gets up, closes the distance between them, gets a hold of Cas’s tie and leans him in.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, look at me.”

Cas’s gaze moves from his glass to Dean’s mouth and up to his eyes. He swallows, slumps his shoulders, and gives into the closeness with a sigh. “Dean.”

“Forget it, okay?” Dean says instead of I’m sorry, because Cas ought to know what he means by now. “You want this? That’s all I need to know.”

He cups Cas’s face the way Cas did before, far too tender for their circumstances. Fuck Heaven, anyway. Fuck Raphael and fuck Balthazar while he’s at it. He kisses Cas until the angel is hanging onto him, at the wrist and the collar of his shirt, and that’s enough. Hands untucking Cas’s shirt, undoing his tie, plucking open the buttons and Cas is all but panting.

“Dean,” he breathes hotly into Dean’s mouth, pulling at his wrist with one hand, pushing at his shoulder with the other. “Dean, I can’t stay.”

“So?” Dean says like it’s nothing, and opens Cas’s shirt to fall to the floor. “Leave whenever you want.”

The hand at Dean’s shoulder presses hard, pushing him back toward the bed. Cas’s eyes are hard and Dean lets himself be guided, lets Cas sit him down at the foot of the bed and close the distance in a kiss. Cas climbs into Dean’s lap, straddles his hips between the trap of his thighs, and roots Dean to the spot.

“Will you be here?” Cas asks between their teeth, grabbing a fistful of Dean’s hair to tug. “The next time?”

“Yeah,” Dean answers, and means it. “Yeah, I will.”

For tonight, for a deal struck in a little motel room in the Iowan back-country, it’s more than enough.


End file.
